CDM 348
Recreating Movie Scenes
Now You See Me- Recreating scenes
For this project, we've been tasked with recreating a scene from a movie using a single camera technique. This means that we'd have to film all of the shots in one angle at a time.
In the end, we decided to go with the four horsemen scene from Now you see Me because its a scene with a variety of shots and still keeps tension going.
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This film is a crime/ thriller genre directed By Louis Leterrie. The interrogation scene from Now you See Me is where Dylan Rhodes (played by Mark Ruffalo) is investigating one of the “four horsemen”, Daniel Atlas (played by Jesse Eisenberg).
Daniel atlas is a magician who had just robbed a bank using a magic trick on stage, Dylan Rhodes threatens Daniel with the FBI but Dylan is still unable to prove Daniel of his crimes
The scene consists of purely hand held camera techniques and using shots ranging from dutch shots to mid shots and close ups. The shakiness of the camera created tension for the scene as well as the quick and numerous shots in a short amount of time.
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We then started writing notes about the scene
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Now you See Me.
30:45
1.Bird eye view shot over "Daniel Atlas shoulder" Towards "Dylan Rhodes"
2. Bird's eye view shot over "Dylan's Rhode" Shoulder to "Daniel Atlas."
Over shoulder shots 12
Dutch shots/tilt 7
CcTV camera (birds eye view shots)
Mid shot
Close up
Medium 2 shot
High up low angle
33 shots in total.
After individually completing a shot list, we put them all together in our group and created a shooting script. Which is a shot list but in the order of which the shots are filmed in, these don't have to be in order for the final cut but are put together for what would be easier filming, so that no one goes back and forth between two positions, like you would do for a single camera technique. This means shooting all of the shots that are filmed in the same position at the same time.
Then we re-ordered the shots in order of conveinence in groups of the types of shots they are. For example, Two separate dutch shots on Dylan would have been filmed together.
We had also written a transcript for the entire scene as the actors in the original didn't stick to the original script of the movie so there was no accurate script online. Here it is below.
Props:
-Handcuffs (with tape to hold down to the table)
-Can of diet coke
-2 old phones
-Small key
-Documents at the end of the table
As soon as we had chosen our scene, we started blocking the camera to figure out the framing of each shot.
This also meant rehearsing over and over again so that the actors could memorise their lines and practice their movements.
The next step of our process was to find the right location for our scene. We were able to secure a studio upstairs that had the right colour of walls and was big enough to have our equipment inside, but as the room was long we decided to put up a black screen to make the room look smaller and to block out the equipment from camera view.
My risk assessment for this particular location is a regular risk assessment unlike the one from the previous project. This included the standard trips and slips as well as heavy lifting of equipment. This is so I am aware of all of the hazards of a location so no one is injured or any equipment is broken and can stay wary.
I then filled a list of the equipment we will be using. I filled in the volume column that tells you how many of the item will be booked out. The rationale tells you what the item will be used for.
Our next process was rehearsing again with the original scene playing in the background so that they were able to get the speech and timing right in line with the audio.
Once this was all done, we had started shooting. However, we filmed the first long shot multiple times in the wrong camera settings as the original scene was in widescreen, this meant that we had to reshoot the footage we had already taken at that point. Once we had gotten to this stage, we didn't have many other issues after this
For the last shot which was the CCTV shot, we had to use a C-Clamp which was attached to half a tripod on a camera and obviously went very high up so we had to have someone stand on a chair to be able to adjust and set up the camera at an angle.
As you can see, we were able to get it very close to the original. We had the C-Clamped camera near the corner of the table but had set the lighting in the wrong place which was discovered during editing.
Where the light is coming from in the original scene
Where the light is coming from in the our scene
Post-Production
I started the editing by importing all of my chosen clips from our footage and began placing them in the timeline with the original scene in the corner with the audio separated from the scenes video. This helped me line up all of the clips with the scene as I could see both of them in the miniplayer.
Once i had finally finished the long process of lining up my footage with the scene, this meant that i was able to focus on the colour grade.
The original scene had a green tint that was very subtle, unlike our original footage as you can see:
Before and after
The final step for colour grading was to also make the final clip look like the CCTV footage in the scene, that although looks completely monotone, actually still had a bit of colour, so i didnt turn the saturation of the clip down all the way.
Evaluation- Now you see me: Recreation scene
Preproduction:
Whilst counting the shots, we realise we had an average of 1 shot every 2 seconds, this meant that it took longer to plan and prepare this scene. The dialogue goes very fast and we struggled to keep up during practice. however, the rest of things went smoothly as planned.
Production:
Our first issue that we came across shooting was that the format of the video did not line up with the cameras, this was because we did not film in widescreen like the original was shot in. Which meant that we needed to change the camera settings to widescreen format. So we changed the camera settings and reshot the first few shots to make sure that they lined up with the scene perfectly. Upon closer inspection, some barriers had matched the shot at the start but were out of place towards the end.
Another issue we faced was the pouring coke shot was facing the opposite way. We were unable to get access to a gimbal on the shooting date so we went completely free-hand using the handle of a tripod to hold our camera, and held the camera upside down to zoom in one the pour, As we planned originally to flip the initial clip to make things look right, the hand was also facing the opposite way, and looked wrong when we tried to flip it horizontally. The most obvious solution for this was to reshoot when we had the right equipment. After some consideration, we decided to reshoot the shots at a later date when we also had access to a gimbal. Upon closer inspection, we found that some shots were out of focus but decided to use them anyway as it was only a quick shot out of the entire scene.
Post production:
Overall, I think my editing this time for this project has improved greatly since the previous one. I've used less time navigating around premiere pro and went straight into editing which meant I was a lot faster this time as it was mainly cutting up clips. I was also able to accurately line up both scenes.
However, I still had a lot of difficulty doing certain tasks, like, managing to change my format to widescreen, or even trying to figure out how to put the original scene in the corner whilst the 2 scenes were overlapping each other.
In this project, I was able to focus solely on the video and clip themselves without having to focus on the audio, this meant that I improved much faster when trying to learn things like colour correction and framing. I also learned how to do certain camera angles that I had never done before (such as a dutch angle) and actually enjoyed trying to figure out how they did these in the original scene.
This also meant, however, that my audio skills will still be lacking by the time I start the next project. My audio and video skills won't be balanced out with each other as I've spent less time learning my way around audio.
Personal Development Plan:
I am going to try and edit clips with audio by the end of the year to improve my skills so that I'm ready for the next project. I will also watch tutorials on youtube that give detailed explanations. I will be able to tell i've improved by comparing my previous projects in the past with my newer ones.